Well, this is the first month we have been in Africa.. My expectations were far exceeded. The Lord blessed us with amazing ministry contacts and amazing ministries.
We got the chance to help build a church from the ground up, hang out with an amazing group of high school students, go door to door and share the love of Christ, and get to know some of the most amazing people of faith in our lives.
I want to share the story of one particular person who really had an impact on my life. Her name is Rebecca and she is only 15 years old. She is a student at the Gilgal school that we worked with this month. Gilgal is a school run by our contacts, Ben and Mama(Christine). Most of the students at the school are orphans and live there. Each student needs about $40 dollars a month to have food, housing and school, but many of them don’t even have enough money for soap let alone an education. Ben and Mama run the school on faith in God’s provision, which has worked for the 3 years now. There are some days when Ben and Mama will get a call that the students don’t have food to eat, so they all get together and pray and within hours, someone will call and say that they have food or money to give them. These people are amazing and they see God move daily!
So, Rebecca is an amazing young woman of God. This past week, we got to hang out with the students 
quite a bit and just hear about their lives and love on them. Rebecca and I went for a walk down the road and just talked. She asked me to tell her a story about my life and family, so I went on to tell her about how God had healed my sister, Siobhan, of Lupus. She started praising God for the story. I asked her to tell me a story about her life, and this is what she told me.
Hey Father left her Mom when she was very young and married another woman. One day, he was on his way home when he stopped at the bank and got all of his money out. As he was on the way home, some men killed him and took all of his money. Then she told me about how this tribe in Kenya called the Pokot Tribe used to raid peoples’ houses. One time, they raided her house, and burned it down to the ground. She and her family had to sleep in a ditch to hide from them. But what she said next is what got me. “But praise be to God because he saved us. We are alive by God’s grace, and He has provided for us the whole time.”
Even though all of these terrible things have happened in her life, she is still praising God for all of the ways God has provided for her. She is one of MANY examples of this kind of faith. The people of Kenya just simply trust and believe God. Most people here have absolutely nothing and live in mud huts, but they know God! I have never seen such faith in a group of people in all of my life. I am challenged. What would it look like if we had nothing? We wouldn’t have much to lose. These people may not have much physically, but they are spiritually rich.
